ISLAMORADA -- For the first time since the Village Council began discussing pumping Islamorada's sewage to Key Largo more than four years ago, a majority of the council has said it wants to make that happen.

The question now is, is it too late?

The council, last Thursday, instructed Village Manager Ken Fields to move forward, "cautiously, but in haste," with discussions with the Key Largo Wastewater Treatment District.

The hope of Vice Mayor Michael Reckwerdt and council members Deb Gillis and Dave Boerner is to have enough information on what an interlocal agreement between the two governments might look like to be able to make a commitment to the pipeline by the council's next meeting on Nov. 5, and certainly by its meeting on Nov. 18, when village engineering contractor Hazen And Sawyer is to present its latest cost analysis of the Key Largo option compared to in-village treatment.

"I believe it's in the neighborhood of $10 million we could save," said Gillis, who also stressed that a pipeline to Key Largo would spare Islamorada neighborhoods from having sewer plants in their backyard.

But even Nov. 5 is pushing the timeline for the village to take full advantage of whatever savings would come from partnering with Key Largo.

Appearing before the council last week, Danny Gonzalez, whose Metro Equipment Service Inc. has been hired by the Key Largo district to build a transmission line from its mile marker 100.5 plant to Tavernier Creek, said he could still order pipes large enough to accommodate Islamorada's flow. But he has to put the order in by early November.

Waiting longer, Gonzalez said, would put the district at risk of not completing the project by July, when it has promised to have crews out of the way so the Florida Department of Transportation can begin a U.S. 1 resurfacing and shoulder widening project.

Should the village not be ready for a commitment by early next month, the council could appeal to the Key Largo board for a brief delay. But while three members of the Key Largo board support a joint operating agreement with Islamorada, the numbers don't appear to be there for a delay.

"I couldn't vote to delay our plant," Robby Majeska, considered the Key Largo board's swing vote on the issue, said in an interview Friday.

Should the district move ahead with its transmission line project without Islamorada, the village could still lay its own pipe from Tavernier Creek to the plant, but at an estimated additional cost of $3 million.

Key Largo board member Andy Tobin, a supporter of working with the village, said such a discussion is a distraction.

"I don't believe that the sky is falling. I don't believe the reef is dying. Let's just deal with reality and the reality is to crunch the numbers," he said.

While Gillis, Boerner and Reckwerdt called for immediate and earnest talks with Key Largo, Mayor Don Achenberg and Councilwoman Jill Zima Borski said no decision about whether to go to Key Largo or treat village sewage in Islamorada should be made until all the numbers are available.

"I feel like Key Largo is the cat with nine lives. It just never dies," Borski said.

She and Achenberg were joined in their call for caution by manager Fields, who, reiterating comments he has made often in recent months, said an exhaustive contract is the key to any deal.

Fields said accusations that he has been an obstructionist on the Key Largo option aren't true. But he also suggested repeatedly that savings for the village would be far less than $10 million.

A Hazen And Sawyer analysis released in July found that construction savings would be just $500,000 out of an estimated $133 million project. That analysis, however, assumed that even as the village pumped some of its sewage to Key Largo, it would also build a plant on Lower Matecumbe Key and expand the existing north Plantation Key plant.

The manager said that Hazen And Sawyer's upcoming analysis would be more thorough, analyzing operating costs as well as construction.

Reckwerdt sounded unconvinced by Fields' assertion that he doesn't care which path the village takes. But he expressed confidence that the manager would accomplish much on the Key Largo front in short order.

"What I want to say is you're going to have to deal with this whether you like it or not," Reckwerdt said.

rsilk@keysnews.com